Skip to main content

Risk assessments overview

A risk assessment is a structured record of the hazards in your business, who could be harmed, and the controls you have in place to keep people safe. In a UK food and hospitality setting it is not optional - it is a legal requirement, and it is one of the first things an Environmental Health Officer (EHO) will ask to see on a visit.

SafetyBrik is the digital replacement for the SFBB (Safer Food Better Business) pack. The Risk assessments area is where the printed assessments at the back of that pack live, organised by category, versioned, and ready to show on demand.

Why risk assessments are required​

Under UK Health & Safety law (Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999) every employer must:

  • Identify hazards in the workplace.
  • Decide who could be harmed and how.
  • Evaluate the risk and decide on controls.
  • Record the findings (mandatory if you have five or more employees).
  • Review the assessment regularly and after any significant change.

For food businesses, this sits alongside your Food Safety Management System (HACCP / SFBB). EHOs expect to see written risk assessments covering food safety, fire, manual handling, and general workplace hazards - and they expect those assessments to be current, signed off, and reviewed.

tip

SafetyBrik treats risk assessments the same way an EHO does: written down, dated, versioned, and reviewed on a schedule. If it is not in here, it is not evidence.

What gets recorded​

Every assessment in SafetyBrik captures:

  • Title - e.g. "Kitchen Food Safety Risk Assessment".
  • Category - one of the standard groupings (see below).
  • Site - one site, or All sites.
  • Review frequency - in months. The default is 6, and SafetyBrik tracks the next review date for you.
  • Notes - any context for the assessment.
  • Hazards - the hazard register, scored on a 1-5 likelihood and 1-5 severity scale.
  • Status and version - draft, current, or superseded, with an explicit version number.

See Building risk assessments for the full builder flow.

Categories operators commonly carry​

SafetyBrik ships with the categories most UK hospitality operators need:

  • Food safety - cross-contamination, temperature control, allergen handling, cleaning chemicals.
  • Fire safety - cooking equipment, extraction, evacuation routes, electrical risk.
  • Slips, trips and falls - wet floors, spills, cables, kitchen-to-front-of-house transitions.
  • Manual handling - deliveries, stock rotation, moving heavy equipment.
  • General workplace - lone working, violence and aggression, display screens, stress.
  • Custom - anything specific to your site (e.g. a wood-fired oven, a coffee roaster, a glycol line).

These categories map directly to what an EHO and a fire officer expect to see in a folder behind the counter. SafetyBrik keeps them all in one searchable list.

Where to find them in the app​

  • List view - the risk assessments list lives inside the SafetyBrik Records area at /safety/records?tab=risk-assessments. You can filter by category, and by site with the site tabs (All sites and each site). Each assessment has one card, with its earlier versions grouped under it.
  • Templates - Start from a template on the list makes a draft from one of SafetyBrik's ready-made assessments, for you to change to fit your business. Or build your own with New Assessment.
  • Builder - new assessments open at /safety/risk-assessments/new and existing ones at /safety/risk-assessments/:id.
  • Audit trail - current assessments appear in full in the EHO Report Pack, ready to download for an EHO visit, and every change is recorded in the audit log.
info

A risk assessment is for one site or for All sites. A site's tab lists its own assessments and the All sites ones, and each assessment is reviewed on its own site's date. A switched-off or removed site's assessments can be read and printed but not changed, except that owners and admins can delete a review in progress at a site that has been removed, so a current version at an open site or All sites can be reviewed again (one at the removed site stays read only).

Lifecycle: draft, current, superseded​

Every assessment moves through a simple lifecycle:

  1. Draft - you are still building it. Not yet considered live evidence. A draft is the only version that can be changed, and owners and admins can delete one.
  2. Current - signed off and active. This is the version an EHO would see. It stays live while it is being reviewed, until the new version is marked current.
  3. Superseded - replaced by a newer version. Kept on file as audit history, exactly as it was.

When something changes (a new piece of equipment, a near-miss, a regulation update) you Start review: SafetyBrik makes a draft of the next version, and the current one stays live until you Mark current on the draft. The old version is preserved so you can always show what your controls were at any point in time.

Next steps​